Safer Devon Partnership

The Safer Devon Partnership (SDP) is the statutory County Strategy Group which provides the strategic leadership for addressing community safety matters across Devon in order to achieve better outcomes for vulnerable people living in vulnerable places.

The main aim being for partners to work effectively together to enable the people of Devon to feel and be safe in their homes and communities.

The vision for the Safer Devon Partnership is: Working together to make Devon feel even safer.

Safer Devon Partners are committed to:

Working innovatively together to address the key vulnerabilities in our local communities

Making informed and evidence-based funding, resourcing and commissioning decisions in partnership

Investing in Prevention and Early Intervention

Using our collective intelligence to understand the effectiveness of the interventions we are undertaking as a partnership.

The Safer Devon Partnership for the first time has used the MoRiLE (Management of Risk in Law Enforcement) tool in order to assess threat, risk and harm in and around surrounding areas. The assessment successfully provided the partnership with a list of the high level threats in Devon, these are:

County Lines/ Dangerous Drug Networks

County lines typically involves a gang (usually made up of young males) from a large urban area travelling to smaller locations (such as a county or coastal town) to sell class A drugs. County lines can be associated to serious violence, murders, rapes and Organised Crime Groups.

Domestic and Sexual Violence and Abuse

The impact of Domestic and Sexual Violence and Abuse (DSVA) on the lives, health and wellbeing of people who experience it can be devastating. It impacts victims, their children, families, friends, co-workers and the surrounding communities. Safer Devon is committed to preventing DSVA in Devon, and aims to do this through educating and empowering indiviuals, families, communities and organisations across the county.

Problem Drinking and Drug use

The SDP commissions a wide range of alcohol and drug misuse support services for residents of Devon. These services help people to make appropriate lifestyle choices that reduce their dependency on drugs and alcohol. For people with more complex needs, such as mental health issues, history of trauma and offending, services that offer additional support are also available.

Child Exploitation –Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) is a specific method of abusing children which involves tricking them into believing they are in a loving, consensual relationship, or grooming them with drugs, alcohol or gifts etc. They often don’t know that they are being exploited.

Barnardo’s carried out a survey of 702 children across the UK who had accessed their services (2016). This survey showed that 42% had been groomed online and 61% of these had been sexually exploited by the person grooming them. Of these, 80% had been exploited by more than one person. In the past it was mainly children who were vulnerable due to lack of parental support who used the service, but now due to the lack of monitoring of internet usage, children who have no existing vulnerabilities and good parental support are also at a greater risk of becoming victims than they were previously.

Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking

Modern slavery is an umbrella term that covers the offences of human trafficking and slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour. The physical impact can include neglect, malnourishment, control through an exploitation of a drug addiction and physical abuse.

There are long term psychological impacts that require specialist intervention. the victim requires a partner agency work to leave the situation, become safe, achieve stability and recover – this is what the SDP is working to achieve through the Anti-Slavery Partnership and with the Migrant Worker action group (MIGWAG).

Terrorism, Radicalisation and Extremism

Violent extremism refers to the beliefs and actions of people who support use violence to achieve ideological, religious or political goals. Radicalisation can be defined as the process by which people come to support terrorism and violent extremism and, in some cases, then join terrorist movements. The UK faces a range of terrorist threats including international terrorism, and extreme right-wing terrorism.

Despite no related incidents within Devon over the last 12 months, each year a number of individuals are identified as being at risk of radicalisation, During the radicalisation process it is possible to intervene to prevent vulnerable people from being drawn into terrorist related activity.

Partners include the four Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) in Devon, the County Council, the Police, the Fire and Rescue Service, the Clinical Commissioning Groups, Public Health, the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, the National Probation Service, the Dorset, Devon and Cornwall Community Rehabilitation Company, Her Majesty’s Prison Service and the Youth Offending Service.

Strategic direction is set by the Safer Devon Partnership Board which is made up of chief officers from all of the aforementioned partner agencies along with the chairs from the four CSPs.

The Safer Devon Partnership Operational Delivery Group supports the SDP Board in fulfilling the requirements of the Crime and Disorder Act (and other associated legislation), the achievement of it’s vision and principles and provides support and challenge to the delivery of best practice Devon wide community safety services and initiatives.

A number of Sub-Groups and Partnerships have been established to drive forward work in relation to addressing various significant threats. These sub-groups/partnerships are accountable to the Safer Devon Partnership Board.

Safer Devon Partners also work closely with a number of other county-wide and peninsula Strategic Partnerships and Groups on a range of shared priorities. This can all be shown in the diagram below:

Be Curious

The Be Curious campaign aims to raise awareness of child sexual exploitation (CSE), modern slavery and violent extremism in Devon. The aim of Be Curious is to encourage people across the county to look out for signs of exploitation in their communities.

The Safer Devon Partnership, Devon Safeguarding Children Board, Devon and Cornwall Police and local authorities from across Devon have come together to raise awareness of three issues affecting our communities:

Violent extremism and radicalisation

Child sexual exploitation

Modern slavery.

The aim of Be Curious is to encourage people across the county to look out for signs of exploitation in their communities.

Strategic Assessment

These documents provide an assessment of each of the high-risk threats in turn of terms of the impact, prevalence and trends, intelligence gaps, emerging threats/challenges and the partnerships capacity and capability in relation to addressing the threats identified within the priorities section. Local context is provided to highlight activity in specific parts of Devon and the peninsula that are relevant to that threat. This is followed by an assessment of the moderate and standard threats that we should be aware of within our local communities. The final sections look at the documents based on the assessment and are summarised at the end. The full documents can be found here:

DHRs were introduced by government in April 2011. The definition of a DHR is ‘a review of the circumstances in which the death of a person aged 16 or over has, or appears to have, resulted from violence, abuse or neglect by:

(a) a person to whom he was related or with whom he was or had been in an intimate personal relationship, or

(b) a member of the same household as himself, held with a view to identifying the lessons to be learnt from the death.’

The purpose of a DHR is to:

establish what lessons are to be learned from the domestic homicide regarding the way in which local professionals and organisations work individually and together to safeguard victims

identify clearly what those lessons are both within and between agencies, how and within what timescales they will be acted on, and what is expected to change as a result

apply these lessons to service responses including changes to policies and procedures as appropriate

prevent domestic violence homicide and improve service responses for all domestic violence victims and their children through improved intra and inter-agency working.

In Devon, DHRs are led by the Safer Devon Partnership.

Since April 2011, five DHRs have been completed and the executive summaries of these reviews are available here:

The Safer Devon Partnership believes that people in Devon have the right to go about their daily lives without fear. We believe that this right applies to everyone living in Devon, irrespective of where they have come from, and irrespective of their faith or their race. We want Devon to be a County free of prejudice and discrimination – a County where opportunities are open to all.

The BME Service Directory offers a practical guide to local services. The first section, which lists more than thirty voluntary and community sector groups across the County, is a testament both to our diversity and to the active citizenship in our communities. The second section, with details of public agencies and initiatives, is a reflection of the positive way that local service providers have been responding to change.

The introduction to Community Safety Partnerships is intended to be a guide to each of the CSPs and to explain a little of their work. There is also an explanation of the geographic coverage of each of the partnerships.